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Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (born Gertrude Pridgett, April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) was one of the earliest African-American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of blues singers to record. The "Mother of the Blues", she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers.
Peter William Sutcliffe (2 June 1946 – 13 November 2020), also known as Peter William Coonan, was an English serial killer who was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper (an allusion to Jack the Ripper) by the press. On 22 May 1981, he was found guilty of murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven others between 1975 and 1980.
Mark Robert Bailey (born 13 January 1965), known by his stage name Bill Bailey, is an English comedian, actor and musician. Bailey is known for his role as Manny in the British sitcom Black Books and for his appearances on the British panel shows Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You and QI, as well as his stand-up work.
The Bible (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía, "the books") is a collection of religious texts or scriptures sacred to Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Rastafari and others. It appears in the form of an anthology, a compilation of texts of a variety of forms that are all linked by the belief that they are collectively revelations of God.
The following deaths of notable individuals occurred in 2020. Names are reported under the date of death, in alphabetical order by surname or pseudonym. A typical entry reports information in the following sequence: Name, age, country of citizenship at birth, subsequent nationality (if applicable), what subject was noted for, cause of death (if known), and reference.
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, born 21 April 1926) is Queen of the United Kingdom and 15 other Commonwealth realms. Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth). Her father ascended the throne on the abdication of his brother King Edward VIII in 1936, from which time she was the heir presumptive.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (film)
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a 2020 American drama film directed by George C. Wolfe and written by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, based on the play of the same name by August Wilson. Produced by Denzel Washington, Todd Black, and Dany Wolf, the film stars Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman (in his final film appearance), with Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, and Michael Potts in supporting roles.
Cleopatra VII Philopator (Koinē Greek: Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ; 69 – 10 or 12 August 30 BC) was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. As a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed and published by CD Projekt. The story takes place in Night City, an open world set in the Cyberpunk universe. Players assume the first-person perspective of a customisable mercenary known as V, who can acquire skills in hacking and machinery with options for melee and ranged combat.
Tenet is a 2020 science fiction action-thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who produced it with Emma Thomas. A co-production between the United Kingdom and United States, it stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh.
The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)
The Queen's Gambit is a 2020 American coming-of-age period drama streaming television miniseries based on Walter Tevis's 1983 novel of the same name. It was created for Netflix by Scott Frank and Allan Scott, and written and directed by the former.
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, (Margaret Rose; 21 August 1930 – 9 February 2002) was the younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and the only sibling of Queen Elizabeth II. Margaret spent much of her childhood with her parents and sister. Her life changed dramatically at the age of six, when her paternal uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated to marry divorcée Wallis Simpson.
Santos Saúl Álvarez Barragán (American Spanish: [saˈul ˈalβaɾes]; born 18 July 1990), better known as "Canelo" Álvarez, is a Mexican professional boxer who is a four-division world champion. He has held the WBA (Super), The Ring and lineal middleweight titles, and the WBA (Regular) super middleweight title since 2018.
Richard Allensworth Jewell (born Richard White; December 17, 1962 – August 29, 2007) was an American security guard and law enforcement officer who is considered the hero of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. For a number of months, he was mistakenly suspected of planting the bomb.
Nicholas Eduardo Alberto Cordero (September 17, 1978 – July 5, 2020) was a Canadian actor. He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as Cheech in the 2014 Broadway musical Bullets Over Broadway and was twice nominated for Drama Desk Awards. His career also included television roles and film roles.
Eric Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American terrorist convicted for a series of bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed three people and injured 150 others, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
Bret Arnold Bielema (; born January 13, 1970) is an American football coach who is currently the head coach for the University of Illinois. A native of Prophetstown, Illinois, he is a former head football coach of the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 2006 to 2012, achieving a 68–24 record and taking them to three straight Rose Bowl Games.
Wonder Woman 1984 (stylized as WW84) is a 2020 American superhero film based on the DC Comics character Wonder Woman. It is the sequel to 2017's Wonder Woman and the ninth installment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). The film is directed by Patty Jenkins from a script she wrote with Geoff Johns and David Callaham, based on a story by Johns and Jenkins.
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketing term for an office suite (bundled set of productivity applications), the first version of Office contained Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Harvey Leigh Cantwell (born 28 January 1999), also known by his stage name Hrvy (stylised in all caps as HRVY), is an English singer and television presenter. He was a presenter on Friday Download on CBBC from 2014 to 2015, and in 2020, it was announced that he would be competing in the eighteenth series of Strictly Come Dancing.
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.
Charles, Prince of Wales (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is the heir apparent to the British throne as the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II. He has been heir apparent, Duke of Cornwall, and Duke of Rothesay since 1952, and he is the oldest and longest-serving heir apparent in British history. He is also the longest-serving Prince of Wales, having held that title since 1958.
Chadwick Aaron Boseman (November 29, 1976 – August 28, 2020) was an American actor. After studying directing at Howard University, he landed his first major role as a series regular on Persons Unknown (2010). Boseman's breakthrough performance came as baseball player Jackie Robinson in the biographical film 42 (2013).
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, 10 June 1921), is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms. Philip was born into the Greek and Danish royal families. He was born in Greece, but his family was exiled from the country when he was an infant.
Caesar's Comet (also Sidus Iulium ("Julian Star"); Caesaris astrum ("Star of Caesar"); Comet Caesar; the Great Comet of 44 BC; numerical designation C/-43 K1) was a seven-day cometary outburst seen in July 44 BC. It was interpreted by Romans as a sign of the deification of recently assassinated dictator, Julius Caesar (100–44 BC). It was perhaps the most famous comet of antiquity.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, (née Roberts; 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to hold that office.
Alice in Borderland (Japanese: 今際の国のアリス, Hepburn: Imawa no Kuni no Arisu) is a Japanese suspense manga series written and illustrated by Haro Aso. It was serialized in Shogakukan's Shōnen Sunday S magazine from November 2010 to March 2015, and later moved to Weekly Shōnen Sunday in April 2015 and finished in March 2016.
Jonathan Favreau (; born October 19, 1966) is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. As an actor, Favreau has appeared in the films Rudy (1993), Swingers (1996), Very Bad Things (1998), The Replacements (2000), Daredevil (2003), The Break-Up (2006), Couples Retreat (2009), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Chef (2014).
Grogu (colloquially known as "Baby Yoda" among fans and the media) is a character from the Star Wars Disney+ original television series The Mandalorian. He is an infant member of the same unnamed alien species as the Star Wars characters Yoda and Yaddle, with whom he shares a strong ability in the Force.
UFC Fight Night: Thompson vs. Neal
UFC Fight Night: Thompson vs. Neal (also known as UFC Fight Night 183, UFC on ESPN+ 41 and UFC Vegas 17) is an ongoing mixed martial arts event produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship that is taking place on December 19, 2020, at the UFC Apex facility in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States.
Callum John Smith (born 23 April 1990) is a British professional boxer. He has held the WBA (Super) and Ring magazine super-middleweight titles since 2018, and won the World Boxing Super Series super-middleweight tournament in the same year. Previously at regional level he held the European and British super-middleweight titles between 2015 and 2017.
Gina Joy Carano (born April 16, 1982) is an American actress, television personality, fitness model, and former mixed martial artist. Carano began training in Muay Thai before transitioning to competitive MMA, where she competed in Strikeforce and EliteXC. She was featured in ESPN The Magazine as well as Maxim.
Strictly Come Dancing (informally known as Strictly) is a British television dance contest in which celebrities partner with professional dancers to compete in mainly ballroom and Latin dance. Each couple is scored by a panel of judges. The title of the show is a continuation of the long-running series Come Dancing, with an allusion to the film Strictly Ballroom.
Macaulay Carson Culkin (born August 26, 1980 (1980-08-26)) is an American actor, musician, and web host. He rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the Christmas films Home Alone (1990) and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). For the former he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1. 65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a 1982 play – one of the ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle by August Wilson – that chronicles the 20th-century African-American experience. The play is set in Chicago in the 1920s, and deals with issues of race, art, religion and the historic exploitation of black recording artists by white producers.
Elon Reeve Musk ( EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate, industrial designer and engineer. He is the founder, CEO, CTO and chief designer of SpaceX; early investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018.
Raymond Thomas Dalio (born August 8, 1949) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist who has served as co-chief investment officer of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates since 1985. He founded Bridgewater in 1975 in New York. Within ten years, it was infused with a US$5 million investment from the World Bank's retirement fund.
Nguyễn Thanh Tùng (born July 5, 1994), known professionally as Sơn Tùng M-TP ([s̪əːn˧ tuŋ˨˩ ɛm˧ te˧ pe˧]), is a Vietnamese singer-songwriter and actor. Born and raised in Thái Bình, Thái Bình Province, Tùng's family discovered his singing ability when he was two years old. His self-written 2012 and 2013 singles, "Cơn mưa ngang qua" and "Em của ngày hôm qua" launched his career.
Maisie Louise Collender Smith (born 9 July 2001) is an English actress and singer. She appeared in the feature film The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) and played the regular role of Tiffany Butcher in the BBC soap opera EastEnders from 2008 to 2014. In November 2016, Smith temporarily returned to EastEnders for a guest stint, before making a full-time return in January 2018.
Sir Barry Alan Crompton Gibb (born 1 September 1946) is a musician, singer-songwriter and record producer who rose to worldwide fame as a co-founder of the group Bee Gees, one of the most commercially successful groups in the history of popular music. With his younger brothers, twins Robin and Maurice Gibb, he formed a songwriting partnership beginning in 1955.
Jill Tracy Biden (née Jacobs, formerly Stevenson; born June 3, 1951) is an American educator who was the second lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to Joe Biden, the president-elect of the United States, who is set to be inaugurated on January 20, 2021, at which time she will become first lady. Born in Hammonton, New Jersey, she grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem (; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Credited with popularizing hip hop in Middle America, Eminem's global success and acclaimed works are widely regarded as having broken racial barriers for the acceptance of white rappers in popular music.
Sir Michael Caine (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Jr., 14 March 1933) is an English actor. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 130 films during a career spanning over 60 years, and is considered a British film icon. As of February 2017, the films in which he has appeared have grossed over $7. 8 billion worldwide.
Narendra Damodardas Modi (Gujarati pronunciation: [ˈnəɾendrə dɑmodəɾˈdɑs ˈmodiː] (listen); born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current Prime Minister of India since 2014. He was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament for Varanasi.
Sulagna Panigrahi is an Indian television and film actress. As a débutante, she played the lead role in the television serial Amber Dhara as Dhara, and went on to play the principal character in Do Saheliyaan. She further did a grey role as Sakshi Rajvansh in Bidaai, until getting her big break in the Bhatt banner film Murder 2 as Reshma. .
Strictly Come Dancing (series 18)
Strictly Come Dancing returned for its eighteenth series with a launch show on 17 October 2020 on BBC One, with the live shows starting on 24 October. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the series launched a month later than usual and ran for nine weeks instead of thirteen.
Janette Manrara Škorjanec (born November 16, 1983) is a Cuban professional dancer and choreographer from Miami, Florida. Originally a Salsa dancer, learning from her Cuban family, she formally studied dance from the age of 19. Manrara is best known for her appearances on the US series So You Think You Can Dance and British dance reality television competition, Strictly Come Dancing.
TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs (2020)
TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs is an upcoming professional wrestling pay-per-view and WWE Network event produced by WWE for their Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. It is scheduled to take place on December 20, 2020 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida.
2020 United States presidential election
The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. The Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and incumbent U.S. senator from California Kamala Harris defeated the Republican ticket of incumbent president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence.
Jamie Laing (born 3 November 1988) is an English television personality, actor, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of the confectionery company Candy Kittens and best known for appearing on the reality television series Made in Chelsea since the second series in 2011. He runs and hosts two podcasts, Private Parts and a BBC Podcast, 6 Degrees from Jamie and Spencer.
True Beauty (South Korean TV series)
True Beauty (Korean: 여신강림; RR: Yeosin-gangrim; lit. Goddess Advent) is a 2020 South Korean television series starring Moon Ga-young, Cha Eun-woo, Hwang In-yeop, and Park Yoo-na.
Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell ( EYE-lish; born December 18, 2001) is an American singer-songwriter. She first gained attention in 2015 when she uploaded the song "Ocean Eyes" to SoundCloud, which was subsequently released by the Interscope Records subsidiary Darkroom. The song was written and produced by her brother Finneas O'Connell, with whom she collaborates on music and live shows.
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current president of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality. Born and raised in Queens, New York City, Trump attended Fordham University for two years and received a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) is an American rock band founded in 1996 by producer, composer, and lyricist Paul O'Neill, who brought together Jon Oliva and Al Pitrelli (both members of Savatage) and keyboardist and co-producer Robert Kinkel to form the core of the creative team. O'Neill died on April 5, 2017.
Harshad Shantilal Mehta was an Indian stockbroker. Mehta’s involvement in the 1992 Indian securities scam made him infamous as a market manipulator. Although, as reported by Economic Times, some financial experts believe that Harshad Mehta didn't commit any fraud; he simply exploited loop holes in the system.
COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory
This article provides a general overview and documents the status of locations affected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The first human cases of COVID-19 were identified in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019.
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Five technology companies in the U.S. information technology industry, alongside Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft.
The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
Viola Davis (born August 11, 1965) is an American actress and producer. Having won an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Tony Awards, she is the first African-American actress to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting". Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2017.